Notes on the AtrocitiesLike a 100-watt radio station, broadcasting to the dozens...

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Republican chatter: "Okay, I'll flip a coin. Heads, deficits and we'll claim having deficits are the main reason to curb spending; tails, then it's having no deficits which is the main reason to cut taxes."

Republicans, 1997: "Jack Kemp worships at the altar of tax cuts. Jack has always said that deficits don't matter. We think that deficits do matter."

Republicans, 2003: "Anything that will help us stop spending money, I'm in favor of.This place is set up to spend money; you know it's just the nature of the beast. And we've tried to say, hey, we don't have to spend so much of it. And if there's a deficit, that may help us."

and

"I think it's clear now that there's no correlation between the size of the deficit and interest rates. There's a much better case to be made that the deficit will force spending down."

(Respectively, those were The Hammer, Sue Myrick, R-NC, and Patrick Toomey R-Penn.)

It's like the President's trifecta, except it's more of a quinella. Maybe the daily double.